I see a psychiatrist in DC and he has confirmed that all his government and non-profit worker patients have basically lost their shit, including me. Add on top of that the triggers caused by the #metoo stuff (WHICH IS GOOD WORK DON’T GET ME WRONG) and I have been a wreck. Your wife is good people.

This is a good comment. As someone with bipolar depression, I co-sign.

We need to! Here’s some of the messaging that works, according to a CAP focus group, discussion and poll from January-April 2017 around the initial tax plan and the first Trump budget. But I didn’t hear this kind of messaging this year from Ds at all. Correct me if I just missed a whole narrative, but I just felt like…

Thank you. Also an option: “basic standards of living” or “basic living standards,” as in, “The Republicans want to make cuts to programs allowing basic standards of living.” Focus group polling has shown that many people these days don’t understand the term “social safety net,” so using language like “basic living”…

NO. It’s not different, and to say that is to buy into their scheme. What do you think the other part of your tax money goes to? (Besides a lot of fucking bullshit defense programs, but you know.) If you’re a taxpayer, you pay for Medicaid and SNAP and TANF and whatever else you want to throw in as well as paying for…

Also, if we let the media take on the “welfare reform” phrasing, we are SO FUCKED for FY19. Because the Rs (AND THE MEDIA) are even starting to use that wording (here, here, here for three different sources in the last few days alone), because using the “entitlement” phrasing is even starting to piss off the old…

I had the same issue tracking down an unbiased source of information—I write policy newsletters for average folks in my field (so, not policy wonks, people outside DC who need to know how things will affect them at home), and I didn’t want to link to the congressional Republican summaries, the Democratic summaries, or…

I live in Arlington, but my dad’s from rural western North Carolina and my husband and his whole family’s from southern Virginia, so I both grew up on and still eat much of the food depicted here—except peanut pie! OMG, where has this been hiding?! I’m going to have to get after my husband tonight. His mom makes a…

No, y’all is for small groups and all y’all is for large groups.

I agree!

Would she have preferred “it”? Because people tend to freak out when you call fetuses “it” too.

How about “y’all”? Second-person plural? Haha, for Spanish-speakers, to translate “vosotros” vs. “ustedes” in my deep-South classroom in high school years ago, my Spanish teacher finally said, “Vosotros is just y’all, and ustedes is when you’re trying to speak to a more formal group.” But anyway, y’all is inclusive…

My friends and I are thirty-somethings and we still do everything you said every single year. So much fun! BUT, I would say the later in the day it gets, the more people who are drunk and throwing axes. The MD Renn Fest sells such cheap booze it’s hard not to be. Of course, the lines get longer every year...

$45?! NOPE. As I commented, go to the Renaissance Festival and do it for way cheaper and much better value-add.

Thirty-five dollars?! At the Renaissance Festival, you can play for like, $2 a pop or something ridiculously inexpensive after having spent all day getting drunk off cheap mead, cider and beer. And it’s only $25 to get in to start with, and that comes with live shows and all sorts of other crazy shit. Much better…

My friend played it THREE TIMES. Then we went to classic Disney karaoke! Something about us all being thirty-somethings really has made it so that we do not give any fucks about displaying our dorkiness to the world and each other.

Thanks to an early-2000s flashback YouTube session I had with some friends Saturday night, I have a suggestion for Very Specific Parties: “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)“ by Aaron Carter.

Sorry, late 2000s, I think. IDK, depends on your definition of mid.

There haven’t been Georgetown stans since the mid-2000s at least. You know, when Georgetown was playing worth a shit.

Sometimes it’s political (literally and figuratively). Like, I can’t really unfriend my father-in-law because my MIL uses his account to look at my personal photos and she’d raise a fuss (which, okay, get your own account, but whatever), BUT he posts horrible conservative bullshit memes so he’s been unfollowed…